I’m sick of news stories about marijuana where the whole story seems written around puns about getting high. Aren’t you? I thought legalization would put an end to that shit, but no. Just the other day I heard this on the radio:

“The recently passed initiative to legalize the recreational use of marijuana seems likely to spark up a controversy with law enforcement as the buzz created by Proposition 64 leaves county and state officials dazed and confused.”

Why do they do that? Why can’t they report a story about marijuana without somehow inserting their derogatory stereotype of stoner slang? What if they covered other news stories that way?

The cops took a shot in the dark, and another unarmed African-American man died at the hands of police last night. Officers raced to the scene of a suspicious character complaint, where 27 year old Leroy Jackson was gunned down on sight. The complexion of this case mirrors a string of recent police shootings which Chief Clinton Swinehart insists were “unfortunate but necessary.”

Or how about:

The Dow went poo today, losing over 200 points in an across the board sell-off.

Or maybe:

The president stood erect at the lectern and delivered the hard truth to the American people.

Do we need that? Do we need a subtext of juvenile wordplay to distract us from the news? If they don’t do it on other stories, then why do it in stories about marijuana? Do writers and editors really think that stories about marijuana are so insignificant that it is OK to subvert them just to show-off how clever they can be with words?

Just wait. When the Trump administration starts executing journalists, us pot smokers will have our revenge. “Well, we can write him off!” or “Hey, it looks like they strung-up another stringer,” we’ll say to each other with a chuckle, between tokes, huddled in our darkened basements, while we wait for the radiation to clear.

Close to a million people get arrested for marijuana every year in the US. Almost a million people are still in prison for for it right now. Even in California, it’s still legal to discriminate against pot smokers, and to drug test employees for cannabis. Workman’s Comp claims still require a drug test, at the time of the injury, and testing positive for marijuana will disqualify you, even though the test does not, in any way, indicate impairment.

The War on Drugs is serious shit. It’s no joke. It kills people and it destroys people’s live. How do they not see that? How do they not see the violence? How do they not see the racism? How do they not see the oppression, but never miss an opportunity to roll in some half-baked puns about stoners getting high. I think it’s about time those reporters opened their eyes and took a proper gander at what they’ve become, because it isn’t pretty.

What People Say:

If you haven't read john hardin's blog before, prepare to be shocked. I always am. (I can't help but enjoy it though...at least when I'm not slapping my hands on my computer desk and yelling at him.) He's sort of a local Jon Stewart only his writing hurts more because it is so close to people and places I love. Kym Kemp
...about, On The Money, The Collapsing Middle Class
... I think he really nails it, the middle class is devolving back into the working class. Pretty brilliant, IMO. Juliet Buck, Vermont Commons http://www.vtcommons.org/blog/middle-class-or-first-world-subsistence
BLOGS WE WATCH: John Hardin’s humorous, inappropriate, and sometimes antisocial SoHum blog is a one-of-a-kind feast or famine breadline banquet telling it like it is—or at least how it is through Mr. Hardin’s uniquely original point of view with some off-the-wall poetic licensing and colorful pics tossed in for good measure. For example, how it all went from this to that and how it all came about like the hokey pokey with your right foot out. You get the idea. Caution: this isn’t for everybody, especially those without a bawdy, bawdry, and tacky sense of humor. You know who you are. We liked it. (From the Humboldt Sentinel http://humboldtsentinel.com/2011/12/16/weekly-roundup-for-december-16-2011/)